Sunday, December 01, 2019

Copyright infringement: a story showing how to make easy profit with very little efforts ( as long as you are not caught)

First, my original drawing:
Then, years and years later this happens: A video showing a brush apparently painting the exact reproduction of my graphite drawing.




Suddendly, the video deseappeared. Half an hour later a new one appears. Wow, I wish I was that fast to create such a detailed work !
Text can be translated like this: "After many sketches, the illustration of the mouse is finally ready!
Model, our Micky, unfortunately he hasn't been around for a few years, but you were so beautiful!"
Once again, a video showing a brush apparently putting the final touches to what looks like a photoshopped composite: paws and ears from my graphite drawing, and head taken from a photo of a mouse.

A quick Google inverse image search shows lots of results for the photo of this mouse, it seems a popular stock photo.

Almost immediately, a new photo, promoting cards which will be sold soon.


A story to be continued?...
UPDATE: She removed the photos and videos ( Great that saves me time from filling the official form to report copyright infringement on different social medias ) and she apologized. I accepted her apologies.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I can’t read any of the low-resolution type. What exactly happened?

Marina Dieul said...

Oh, that strange, I can read it all. Well I'll try to explain what happened.
Someone pointed me that this woman stole my work, I found that she posted a video of her hand and brush apparently adding few brush strokes on the exact reproduction of my graphite drawing. When I pointed that my work is protected by copyright laws she answered: "this is een original painting we made from our own mouse. We made this painting a few years back (2017),he is now not longer with us. Every painting we made by hand has been registered, on paper by notary. So also this one in 2017!"
So I answered:
"I doubt very much that by chance you ended creating the exact same drawing than my original drawing created and registered in 2012. I also have the original photo of my dear little mouse that I used as a reference, as a proof. As it is a very popular image on Pinterest, it's also one of my most stolen images. A simple inverse image search on google shows tons of results of my signed drawing older than 2017. You're not the first one to claim that it's your own creation. I'm very doubtful you can win the case in front of a court."
And she removed the video so the comments disappeared as well. Less than 30 mn afterthoughts, she posted a new video, with what appears to be a photoshopped composite of my drawing and a stock photo that she claims to be a photo of her pet mouse which was her model. Once again you can see her adding few brush strokes. A quick search showed that her supposedly pet photo is in reality a widely used stock photo, I commented that, but she removed my comment. I commented again that even using parts of my drawing is a copyright infringement, but she didn't answered so far. At the same time she posted a photo of a card with the composite photo on it, and that she probably plans to sell.
I came to the conclusion that she just prints images that she takes on Internet, and films herself pretending adding few brush strokes on them so people believe that she painted them. I can't imagine other way to produce such amount of details in less than 30 mn, and I can't either understand how someone can produce a graphite drawing with a brush and paint!

Jim said...

It must be so frustrating to see your own hard work being used in this way, such a blatant copy. I know they say that imitation is the highest form of flattery, but this is just theft.